The 23-year-old Ukrainian model who was with slain opposition leader Boris Nemtsov tearfully recounted their last dinner in a chic Red Square restaurant and their walk onto a nearby bridge — but said she did not see the gunman who pulled the trigger.
The emotional account by Anna Duritskaya came amid a swirl of speculation about who was responsible for the high-profile assassination and what it means for Russia.
While state-run and Kremlin-controlled media focused on a theory that the killing was a provocation aimed at staining President Vladimir Putin, his critics are holding the Russian leader responsible for creating an atmosphere that encouraged the crime by fanning nationalist, anti-Western sentiments and vilifying the opposition.
Duritskaya said she has been questioned extensively by authorities. Shortly after midnight Tuesday, Duritskaya flew into an international airport in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, from where she was swiftly whisked away by a security detail in a car with blacked-out windows.
Vadim Prokhorov, a lawyer for Nemtsov who traveled with Duritskaya, said she had been left emotionally drained by investigators’ questioning.
“She has given a full and exhaustive account of her last hours with Boris,” Prokhorov said. “If any further investigative action is required, she has promised — something she has done publicly — that she will co-operate. The main thing is that the guilty parties be tracked down.”
In her first public comments since the killing, Duritskaya said in an interview with Russia’s independent Dozhd television that she waited for Nemtsov to meet her Friday night at the Bosco Cafe, a pricey restaurant in the former GUM department store on Red Square. He had just given a radio interview in which he had slammed Putin’s “mad, aggressive policy” on Ukraine.